Harpers Falls (the town)
Harpers Falls, Massachusetts is a mid-sized city, of comparible size to the real life cities of Brockton and Attleboro, located an hour's drive between Boston and Providence. A suburb of Boston, it is located on the Scituate River in Boston's South Metro area. It was founded in 1700's as Scituate Falls, for the falls of the river of the same name, but it wasn't until 80 years later, after the American revolution when the falls were discovered by a merchant from Boston named Winthrop Harper; who founded the family business, Harper Industries and the community's main boarding school, Harper Academy, which began as Springlake Academy, but changed to Harper Academy in 1874. Then the town called itself Harper's Falls, but later the town dropped the apostrophe. Now it's called Harpers Falls. Winthrop was a simple but wealthy man, who married a member of Boston society, Cecelia Whittemeyer, and had a family that ran right to heirs. His great-grandson, Richard(Richard's father was Preston Harper, one of Winthrop's grandsons) had taken over the family businesses after he died. He also had three great-granddaughters, June, Marilyn and Marjorie. Richard had been married to Violet Wheeler, wealthy in her own right and a name on the same level as the Harpers themselves, and they had seven children, (the present Harpers), and had five blood gandchildren and two adopted grandchildren. At present the two names are still forces to be reckoned with in town. The Wheelers are currently represented by Patricia Wheeler and her brother, Jeffrey, who were Violet's sister and younger brother. They were later joined by their sister, Joyce. This brings the Wheelers back into view. Patricia is the widow of William Lambert, and has three children Roger, Caitlyn and Kip. Another daughter, Alicia, died at the same time as Bill, since both were murdered, later, Kip died of cancer off screen. The only grandchild from the Wheeler side is Ellen Lucas, who lives with her adopted mother, Susannah Lucas, who is the sister of Anyssa Lucas Harper Forson, and lives mainly in Illinois. Much of Harpers Falls has remained the same since Winthrop had founded the town. The Harpers had lived in the Mansion which was the original headmaster's house and the second building on the Harper Academy Campus. Current residents include Michael and Shelby Harper, Rosemary, and Hannah Anderson Harper; Michelle Harper, her life partner, Marie Sanborne; her adopted daughter, town district attorney, Anyssa Harper Forson and her husband, Bryan Forson, a federal prosecutor. Michelle's birth daughter, Sheila, married to Allen Watkins, lives with her husband and his family at their mansion, Watkins Bend. There are four guest houses on the Harper property at present. Bryan and Anyssa live in one of them, along with Velda Smithfield, the Harper family's social secretary and Anyssa's birth aunt; Wanda Madison, a waitress and former nanny of Shelby and Maureen, live in another with her family, daughters Eunice and Jennifer and her granddaughter, Melanie; James and Emily Reed, family members of one of the Harpers former servants who had been murdered, live in yet another one along with James' sister, Wilhelmina (who took over the role of housekeeper after Laurel's death), and his mother, Anna, another Harper housekeeper; and the fourth one is the new home of the Saxton family, Josie, Jason, Bentley, Tessa and Eleanor, along with Jason's wife, Wendy. A fifth one is slated to be built and ready to occupy in 2011. (Anyssa's best friend and later adopted sister, Susannah Lucas, from Somerset, Illinois, often stays with the Forsons.) Aileen, the Harper's formerly devil-may-care daughter, lived in a dorm, she eventually left the dorms and moved in with her birth mother, Angela Mercier, and her discovery of her being a Mercier and not Harper, has changed her attitude immensely. She now lives with Angela, her mother, and their assistant, Karen Lowenstein, at a beautiful mansion on the east side of town. Chris Wainwright, Sheila's brother, lived in an apartment building on Westmont Avenue, another major east-west street in town. He lived there with his late life partner, Al Wainwright, who had been tragically murdered; his cousin, Dylan Harper lives in a modest mid-sized home on Attleboro Ave, one of the major streets in Harpers Falls. When Kip Langsberg, his former partner, moved back to Waltham, Dylan had his new lover, Alex Corwin, move in with him. They are happy indeed. Chris also moved into Dylan's house, and currently has a new partner in widower Bill Saxton. The main industry in town is Harper Industries, the family corporation; and their offices are located on Scituate Avenue, the main east-west street. They also have a huge headquarters building in Boston's Back Bay area. They work closely with Mercier Industries and Watkins Industries, two similar companies with their offices in Harpers Falls. A fashion design studio, owned and operated by Cynthia Archer and Sheila Wainwright, was recently opened on Falls Boulevard, which runs along side the namesake Falls. There are also many mansions in the area. After selling their former home in nearby Merrillton (which is about twenty miles south of Harpers Falls and the home of Poshly Academy), the Watkins family moved into the former Jacobsen estate on Jacobsen's Bluff Road. The street was then changed to Watkins Bluff road, at the bequest of Sheila. Other amenities are a fully developed park system which would be comparible to Boston's famous Emerald Necklace park system, with the center piece park being Harper Park, located on the Northwest side of town. The falls flow along the Scituate River, and the falls are located in this park. Many big name stores are located in the downtown area. Wheeler's Department Store, owned by the matriarch of the Harper family and now owned by the Harpers themselves, still does a brisk business, although it does have it's competitors in Boston, and the outer mall called Falls City Mall, of which a branch store is located. Besides Harper Academy, considered one of the finest co-ed boarding schools in all of New England, there are also public schools in the community. Denise Abbott (upon Denise's death, her niece, Camilla Griswold) and Nicholas Haller work as attorneys in Harpers Falls, in a law building near the city's ultra modern Law Enforcement center. which is joined to the baroque historical City Hall. The City Hall is on Scituate, well before the Scituate Split (so named because Scituate splits to the right and becomes Falls Boulevard) The community's public library, Harper Memorial Library, is located on Scituate Avenue. It was recently renamed Harper Memorial, for Cecelia Harper, and her grandson Richard and his wife, Violet. The community's main medical center, the Florence Harper Memorial Hospital, named after Winthrop and Cecilia Harper's daughter, who had died of scarlet fever, is located on the northern side of the city. Thanks to the foresight of the Harpers, the MBTA (Massachusetts Bay Transit Authority), commuter trains and buses now serve Harpers Falls, daily. The buses and trains meet at the Transit center. The Greyhound Bus station is at the Crossroads intersection (the Crossroads is so named because it is the intersection of the two main streets in town, north-south Attleboro and east-west Scituate, which is also the beginning of the street numbering system), while the train station is two blocks east on Scituate and Waltham Avenues. Category:Settings in HF Category:Places